Bilingualism and auditory cortex morphology
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1
Cognition and Brain Unit, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
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2
INSERM, CEA, Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, Neurospin center, France
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3
Department of Psychology, Universitat Jaume I, Spain
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4
Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Science, Germany
Previous studies have shown that human brain structure can vary, not only with development, ageing and neuropathology, but also, with experience and training. However, anatomical differences within participants with various language backgrounds have not been fully clarified. Here we asked whether different language exposure can influence Heschl's gyrus' (HG) size. Forty-four healthy adults were recruited for this study, 22 monolinguals and 22 early bilinguals. The monolinguals were native speakers of Spanish while the bilinguals were early and highly proficient Spanish-Catalan speakers. Anatomical magnetic resonance images were taken for each participant and HG were manually marked in the left and right hemispheres. Two skilled raters were blind to group (monolinguals and bilinguals), gender (male and female) and hemisphere (left and right). Inter-rater reliability was assessed comparing all drawings (r = .873, p < .001). Voxel-Based-Morphometry (VBM) was additionally used to confirm a possible effect of the manually marked HG. The analysis of variance on the HG total volume with the factors Group (monolinguals vs. bilinguals), Gender (male vs. female) and Side (left vs. right) showed that the manually marked HG volumes were significantly larger in bilinguals than in monolinguals (F(1,40)=5.4; p < .05). There was also a significant gender difference with female HG bigger than male HG (F(1,40)=5.8; p < .05). No interactions were found. The VBM confirmed the difference by introducing a ROI (Region of Interest) over both HG into the analysis. In this study we show a significant difference in brain morphology between early bilinguals compared to monolinguals and we suggest that early bilingual exposure may have an impact on brain long-term morphology.
Keywords:
Bilingual,
Language
Conference:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Poster Sessions: Neural Bases of Language
Citation:
Ressel
V,
Pallier
C,
Ventura-Campos
N,
Díaz
B,
Roessler
A,
Ávila
C and
Sebastián-Gallés
N
(2011). Bilingualism and auditory cortex morphology.
Conference Abstract:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00289
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Received:
22 Nov 2011;
Published Online:
28 Nov 2011.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Volker Ressel, Cognition and Brain Unit, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, volker.ressel@kispi.uzh.ch